1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a technology for treating a plurality of pieces of electrical data and more particularly, to an audio reproducing apparatus and an information processing apparatus outputting selected data among a plurality of pieces of audio data or electrical data, and an audio reproducing method utilized in the apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the developments of information processing technology in recent years, it has become easy to obtain an enormous number of contents easily via recording mediums, networks, broadcasting wave or the like. For example, in case of music contents, downloading from a music distribution site via a network is generally practiced in addition to purchasing a recording medium such as a CD (Compact Disc) or the like that stores music contents. A diversification in obtaining methods, including image recording, audio recording or creating by a user himself/herself, leads to increasing contents or electrical data stored in PCs, reproducing apparatuses, or recording mediums.
Therefore, a technology becomes necessary to search through an enormous number of contents for a desired content easily. For example, displaying image data as thumbnails enables a user to view the whole contents without opening each file which records data, by displaying a reduced-sized image list. In a similar way, displaying the types of numerous pieces of electrical data with different icons allows a user to narrow down the candidates of desired data, visually.
Meanwhile in case that the user would like to know the content of audio data, such as music or the like, which can not be laid out visually, it ends up using textual information, such as a title or the name of a performer, as a clue. However, the number of pieces of audio data owned by an individual, such as music contents or the like, is continuously increasing and it is not easy to find out desired data from such a list of textual information.
Besides, even in case of visual data, there are a lot of data with many details which are not appropriate to be displayed as thumbnails, for example, textual data or graphic data with small details. Also with those kinds of data, desired data has to be searched for only by textual information, such as, a title, the date and time of creation or the like, as a clue. Thus, it becomes more and more difficult to find the desired data as the number of pieces of stored data increases.